"Life is like a box of chocolates... You never know what you're gonna get."
Alright, alright. You don't have to tell me. I know that by now, seven years and a worldwide gross of $600 million later, we're all so sick of witty "Gump-isms" that we want to throw ourselves onto a flaming spit of Bubba Gump shrimp in effigy. But flash way back to the summer 1994 - before the box office, the Oscars, the "Gumping of America" - and remember your initial reaction to the film. Did you love it? Hate it? Remain indifferent? Think Forrest was a lame dickhead?
Something odd has happened to the perception of Gump in the years since its blockbuster release. A backlash began to quickly build against the film, and it wasn't just because critics wanted Pulp Fiction to win the Best Picture Oscar that year. Many accused Forrest of being an ode to conservatism, a full-on attack on the counterculture (which is odd, considering the majority of the above-the-line cast and crew are diehard Hollywood liberals.) Was Gump really preaching that stupidity is a virtue? That traditional values are what makes this country great? That Jenny deserved to die of AIDS because she was a promiscuous hippie?
Given all the controversy, I was hesitant about revisiting the film again on Blu-ray Disc. Would I laugh at the film's cornball sentimentality, its forced melodrama, the now-quaint CGI effects? I need not have worried. Fifteen years after it snagged all those Oscars, Gump is still a winning, whimsical meditation on the America of our shared collective dreams, a sunny ode to idealism drenched in nostalgia and possessing the rarest of qualities in Hollywood cinema these days, optimism. In hindsight, the talk of Gump as some sort of Rush Limbaugh sock puppet seems faintly ludicrous. Despite his bad haircut, Forrest does not proclaim idiocy as a virtue, because he isn't a character at all. He's a plot device, a way of stripping away the intellectual conceits of supposedly "literate" cinema and tearing the medium down to its bare essence. Gump revises history in the way we'd like it to be, burning our grandest wish-fulfillment fantasies onto celluloid. That America almost fetishized the film seems inevitable in hindsight. The acknowledgment of Gump by the mass audience reinforced this basic truth, that popular filmmaking is an emotional not an intellectual medium. Perhaps that is what pissed off the self-proclaimed elite?
And what of all the conservative leanings? As Gump makes his journey across the decades - from sea to CGI-shiny sea - he never wavers in his fundamental beliefs and decency. But Forrest doesn't succeed because he is stupid; rather, he succeeds because he can't intellectualize his way out of his emotions. In an irony lost on many who attacked the film, all the characters in Gump - Jenny, Lt. Dan, good ol' mama - are the ones who run. Since Forrest isn't a character per se but a set of ideals and values, he perseveres even when our human frailties deep six the other characters. Rather than an attack on "liberalism," if there is any lesson to be learned from Gump it is that happiness and fulfillment come not from getting what you want, but wanting what you've got. Ohhh, such heady thoughts!
Even if you hate Forrest Gump, the film remains important, if only as an example of how far the art of special effects has advanced in just a few short years. While I'm not a big fan of the film's jokey, now-dated "Forrest inserted into newsreel footage via CGI" slapstick, Zemeckis is able to cut through all his usual hard-sell artifice and expose some universal truths. Some hate Tom Hanks, but it is hard to imagine anyone else playing Gump. His delicate performance is a lesson in how to convey a range of emotions through simple gestures. He deserved the Oscar as much as anyone else that year. Robin Wright (sans Penn) is also excellent, and still underrated. The film simply wouldn't have worked without her, and Wright brings true humanity to a character that could have been easily lost amid all the hi-tech trickery. Supporting players Gary Sinise, Sally Field and Mykelti Williamson are all also perfectly cast and give indelible performances.
Is there anything left to say about Gump? Probably not. Those who dislike the film and what it "stands for" probably will never be swayed. Those who love it won't care about the criticisms. Me? I continue to admire it, because it dares to be sentimental. And don't worry, I won't try and end this review with some lame "box of chocolates" joke. I'll just cook up a cocktail of Bubba Gump shrimp, throw on my "Have A Nice Day" T-shirt and fire up the PS3. And let the intelligentsia be damned.
